


Someday We'll Know

by BleedingInk



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Human, Demisexual!Castiel, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Happy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-06
Updated: 2019-10-06
Packaged: 2020-11-25 16:23:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20915036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BleedingInk/pseuds/BleedingInk
Summary: Castiel isn't looking for a relationship right now, but when Dean and Sam hit on her friends and he ends walking Meg Masters home, he starts to think maybe that could change. Meg, however, has her own secrets that she's hoping Castiel won't find out...





	Someday We'll Know

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LilyAnson](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LilyAnson/gifts).

> Happy birthday, Lori! Hope you enjoy this!

“I’m gonna go talk to them.”

“Dean, no.”

“Come on! Three beautiful unaccompanied women? Three tragically single guys like us?” Dean insisted. “It’s destiny!”

Castiel wasn’t sure about this logic, but he did feel frustrated that another night that was supposed to be about the three of them having beers and enjoying themselves had turned into Dean searching for his latest conquest. Sam, at least, seemed to share his annoyance.

“I am really sorry about him,” he said while Dean stood up and confidently stalked towards the table where his three marks were.

“Don’t be.” Castiel took a swig of his beer. “Dean will do… as Dean does.”

“Well, hello there, ladies!” they heard him say, follow by some giggles and laughter.

Castiel looked over his shoulder. The three girls that Dean had been eyeing since the moment they’d walked in the bar seemed very receptive to his advances. The redheaded one even patted her empty side of the booth to invite Dean to sit down with them. So maybe they weren’t as closed off as Castiel had thought in the beginning. Or maybe Dean’s charm was just that strong.

“Do you think you could make room for my two friends?” Dean said, turning towards the counter where Sam and Castiel were sitting.

“Oh, no,” Castiel whispered.

He really didn’t mind if Dean wanted to ditch them and go home with a pretty girl (it happened often enough that he was used to it by now), but he didn’t understand his insistence to try and get _Castiel_ to leave with someone. He was fine the way he was, alone, and he wasn’t looking to have a relationship.

He could already hear what Dean would have to say about that.

_“Who said anything about a relationship? Just take her home and have a good time!”_

He simply couldn’t conceive that sex wasn’t all that big of a deal for Castiel. Dean was a great friend, but he had some glaring blind spots when it came to how Castiel approached his relationships.

Sam was a bit more respectful, though. The brunette of the trio, a very pretty girl with olive skin and full lips, was waving at them and there was a very obvious glint of interest in Sam’s eyes, but he still turned to Castiel and offered him an out:

“Listen, I’ll tell Dean that you had to go home if you don’t want to…”

“Dean is never going to forgive me for being a ‘buzz killer’.” Castiel drew air quotes with his fingers. He’d heard Dean’s argument way too many times. He grabbed his beer, took another swig to give himself courage and stood up. “Let’s just get it over with.”

Dean was already comfortably sitting next to the redheaded woman, but he jumped to his feet when they approached them.

“Well, here they are!” he said, as if he was introducing a circus act. “My little brother Sammy, who isn’t so little, if you know what I mean.”

“Seriously?” Sam said, but he couldn’t hide a smile when the women started laughing. Well, at least two of them did, the brunette and the redhead.

The blonde, who was sitting on the edge of the booth, just rolled her eyes and took another sip from her bottle. Castiel felt an immediate kinship with her.

“Uh, I like a tall man!” the brunette quipped.

“They’re all tall, Ruby,” the blonde replied.

Dean ignored them as he moved to put his hands on Castiel’s shoulder.

“And this is our shy, but devastatingly handsome friend, Cas,” he introduced him. “He needs some help coming out of his shell, so be patient with him.”

“Well, I’m sure we can do something about that, right, Abaddon?” Ruby, the brunette, asked.

“Oh, we’ll think of something,” the redheaded said, leaning a little over the table. “Hi, there.”

She was terrifying. Castiel had no idea why Dean had taken an interest in her. They were all wearing jeans and leather jackets over their colorful blouses, in a way that made Castiel think it was some sort of uniform not unlike the suits him, Dean and Sam were wearing, but the redheaded (Abaddon, no doubt a nickname) also had blood red lips and very long fingernails. When they moved so they could all find a way to fit in the booth, Castiel made sure to sit far away from her, even if that meant that he was now almost falling out of the seat and sitting next to the clearly disinterested blonde.

“So, what are three beautiful but lonely ladies like you doing here tonight?”

“Unbelievable,” the blonde muttered under hear breath as she drank.

Castiel wished he could have offered her some sort of consolation or signal that he, too, was very uncomfortable with this development, but he couldn’t do it without throwing a wrench in the good mood at the other end of the table.

The three girls were all co-workers (“What a coincidence, so are we!”) in a bike repair shop, which prompted Dean to start talking about classic cars (one of his favorite subjects) and soon enough, he and Abaddon were involved in a heated, but still clearly flirty argument over which means of transportation was better for long road trips.

Sam and Ruby, on their part, seemed to be having a completely different one.

“So you’re a lawyer, huh?” Ruby said, her fingers slipping up Sam’s arm.

“Yeah… yeah,” Sam said. He seemed a bit put on the spot with her, but he was also very proud of his accomplishments as he should be. “We both went to Stanford…”

He started regaling her with the tale of how their dad was a mechanic, so he couldn’t afford to pay for their educations, so they have both applied for scholarships and got full rides. Castiel had heard that story before, so he was content with just sipping his beer and not participate in the conversation. He had the impression that opening his mouth would ruin his friends’ chances at their conquest.

“You don’t talk much, do you?”

Castiel almost choked on his beer and turned to the blonde woman, whose name he still didn’t know. Her arm and leg grazed his on the cramped space, but her expression was neutral, like she couldn’t care less about the entire situation.

“I, uh… well, Dean said it. I’m not good in these… social situations,” Castiel said.

It took him a second to realize that since Dean was talking to Abaddon and Sam was flirting with Ruby (and they had got incredibly close to each other in just a few minutes, with Sam lowering his head closer to hers and Ruby toying with his tie as she asked him more questions about his life), that he was supposed to entertain their friend so she didn’t feel left out.

“I’m sorry,” he said, cringing.

“Don’t be,” she replied, with a shrug. “This was supposed to be a _girls'_ night out.”

She stared daggers at her two friends, but neither of them noticed it.

“Yes, well… I’m sorry about Dean,” Castiel apologized again. “I tried to stop him from coming over here, but it would’ve been easier to deviate a hurricane from its path.”

Dean always said he talked too “poetically” for people to connect with him, but his words seemed to amuse the blonde. For the first time since he’d set eyes on her, she smiled: a soft, almost imperceptible smirk of amusement in her lips.

“Or a car crash,” she added. “But don’t worry about it, Abaddon is going to eat him alive.”

Abaddon was grinning wide at Dean and the good mood and confidence that he’d displayed before had vanished a little. Castiel was glad that he’d been proven right on his assessment of her.

“That would be very inconvenient, though. He’s not as tall as Sam, but she would still have to chop him into pieces to get him to fit in the oven.”

His sense of humor was also weird and off-putting and he was well-aware of this. He took things too literally and made awkward comments like that one. So he wouldn’t have been surprised if she made a face and said something along the lines of “forget it” as she went back to her hostile silence.

But she didn’t. She laughed.

“Well, that’s nothing a very sharp cleave can’t fix,” she commented. She took one last swig of her beer and extended a hand towards him. “I’m Meg, by the way.”

“Cas,” he said, before realizing that Dean had already introduced him and he was being redundant. He was about to apologize again, but she didn’t give him time.

“What’s that short for?” she asked, after they shook hands.

“Castiel. It’s the angel of Thursday,” he added quickly, because he knew that was the next question that would usually followed. “My father named me and my brothers all after angels. And I was born on a Thursday, so…”

“That’s kind of funny,” Meg said, but she didn’t explain how. “Alright, what do you think would be the best way to cook your friend over there?”

“Well, he does go to the gym, so he is rather lean,” Castiel pointed out. “So I think maybe she could slice him in fillets and marinate him overnight.”

“A good choice, but Abaddon is not exactly known for her patience,” Meg said. “Maybe she could larger chunks and just stick him in the oven for an hour or two with a lot of salt and seasoning.”

“She could also pound him.”

He didn’t exactly why this was funny, but Meg laughed so hard at it that he couldn’t help but to smile and laugh as well. It took them a few seconds to realize that everyone at the table was staring at them.

“Sorry, sorry…” Castiel said.

“You guys want more drinks?” Meg asked. “We’re gonna go get more drinks.”

Castiel was glad to find an excuse to get out of the cramped booth. Meg kept laughing all the way to the counter.

“Oh, my God, you’re a riot,” she said after she signaled at the bartender to get more beers. “If I wasn’t this committed to hate you and your friends, I would put the moves on you.”

The sentence confused him. Could a person just decide to hate someone they had barely met? He supposed they had crashed their “girl’s night”, after all.

“Well… I’m not looking for anything right now,” he said, awkwardly. “So maybe we could just… keep each other company while they…” He pointed back at the table. “Do what they do.”

“Yeah, I guess we could do that. Bartender!” she called. “Can we have two shots of tequila over here?”

Castiel rarely drank anything stronger than a beer, but when she handed the shot glass to him, he didn’t know how to refuse her. Also, he didn’t want to. Meg seemed like an interesting, funny person and he guessed there were worse people to get stuck with while his friends attempted to get laid.

Meg raised her glass.

“To…” she hesitated.

“Companionship?” Castiel suggested.

“Companionship!” she approved and clinked her glass against his.

Castiel swallowed his shot in one go and grimaced as the alcohol burned down his throat. Meg seemed like a more experience drinker, because she didn’t even flinch as she put the glass down.

“So, how do you think Abaddon should serve her lean man meat?” she asked, passing three bottles to Castiel. She still seemed greatly amused by the idea.

“Well, Dean does like cheeseburgers a lot. I think he would be honored if he was turned into them.”

“Great idea! She could have a barbecue and invite us all!”

“Would you eat the meat if you knew what it was made of?” Castiel narrowed his eyes at her as they made their way back to the table.

“I mean, if it was correctly seasoned,” Meg said. “Would you?”

“I don’t know if I could.”

“Think about it this way: you said your friend likes cheeseburgers, right? So eating one made of him would be a nice way to honor his memory.”

Castiel thought about this for a second as they sat back down on their corner of the booth.

“There are cultures who think eating someone else means you’re granted their virtues,” he commented. “Maybe I could eat him as a way to acquire some of the things I admire about him.”

“Really? Like what?”

Castiel opened his mouth and closed it again, his mind completely blank. This didn’t mean that Dean have any virtues (he did, of course), he just couldn’t come up with one right now. But Meg must have interpreted that wasn’t the case, because she laughed loudly once again. She had a very nice laughter, deep and cutting.

The others were all staring at them as if they’d cut the tail end of their conversation.

“What are you two talking about?” Sam asked.

“Cooking recipes!” Meg replied, grinning at them. It was Castiel’s turn to laugh at the confusion in his friend’s faces.

“Right,” Dean said. He squinted his eyes and tilted his eyes. “Hey, don’t I know you from somewhere?”

Meg’s laughter froze for some reason.

“I don’t think so, no.”

“Really? I could swear I’ve seen your face before…”

“In your dreams, maybe,” Meg said and drank from her bottle with confidence.

“Hey, Dean,” Abaddon interrupted. “I would really like to see this car of yours…”

By the time they’d finished this second round of beers, it was clear that they wanted to move the party elsewhere. Ruby was practically sitting on Sam’s lap and Abaddon kept insisting she wanted to “check Dean’s car”, so it was not really surprising when the brothers decided to pay the check, including the girls’ drink (“No, we insist, come on!”) and walk out of the bar.

“Hey, Meg,” Ruby called while they were walking out. They stopped a few steps back from the main group and whispered something among themselves. Castiel and Sam waited for them while Dean walked with Abaddon towards his beloved Chevrolet Impala.

“There you go! Isn’t my baby a beauty?” he asked, patting the car’s hood proudly.

“Well, you certainly know how to take care of her,” Abaddon admitting, with an approving nod. “So how fast can she go?”

Ruby and Meg caught up with them.

“All settled, stud,” Ruby said, smiling wide at Sam. “So, shall we get a taxi?”

“What was that all about?” Castiel asked.

“Oh, she was asking me not to show up at home for a couple of hours,” Meg explained. “We’re roommates.”

Castiel was about to ask what that had to do, but then he noticed that Sam’s hand slid down Ruby’s back to cope a feel of her ass as he opened the taxi’s door for her. He figured Ruby they didn’t want to be interrupted.

Dean pulled the car closer to them, with Abaddon riding on the passenger seat.

“You guys want us to drop you off somewhere?”

Castiel looked at Meg. Dean had been his ride there and the cheapest way to get home that he had, but Meg had just been asked to stay out of her place for a while. She shrugged.

“I was thinking of taking the long way home,” she said.

“Is it okay if I come with you?” Castiel offered.

Meg raised her chin.

“Are you going to tell me it’s late and a pretty girl like me shouldn’t be out alone?”

That had been part of Castiel’s concern, yes, but there was another more selfish reason and he figured Meg would respond better to it.

“I don’t want to third wheel,” he said, pointing at the car.

Meg smiled and waved at Dean.

“We’re fine, thanks!”

“Have fun!” Abaddon wished them as they sped out of the bar’s parking lot.

“So… your friends seem to be very… straightforward,” Castiel commented as they started walking the street.

“They’re little go-getters is what they are,” Meg said, rolling her eyes. “I can’t really blame them. I might be uninterested in playing the game altogether, but that doesn’t mean I should try and keep them on the benches with me.”

“Why are you out of the game?” Castiel wanted to know. Meg was a beautiful, funny woman. He figured that guys like Sam and Dean would be interested in her pretty often.

“Because I’ve made some pretty glaring mistakes in the past,” she replied, with a shrug. “Why are you out of the game?”

Castiel thought about it for a second.

“I… I guess I’ve just never been much of a player.”

Meg scoffed, the way many people did when he said something along those lines. He didn’t blame them. His thought process when it came to those things was hard to explain, even to himself.

“Were you like… an altar boy who thought looking at girls was sinful and wrong?” she asked.

“Not really.” Castiel thought about this. “I just… wasn’t too interested.”

“So what are you interested in?” she continued asking. “Guys?”

“I’ve never met one who, uh… tickled my fancy?” he said, not sure if he was using that expression correctly.

“I’ve met some girls who’ve tickled mine,” Meg said, with a shrug. “It’s never lasted. Not that I’ve had better luck with men.”

When she said she was taking the long way, she wasn’t exaggerating: her steps were slow and languid, and she didn’t seem to be going into any particular direction. She would turn on corners at seemingly random and Castiel was sure they must have walked past some of the same spots at least twice. He didn’t particularly mind following her around. It was a very pleasant, warm night and he truly enjoyed talking to Meg.

“But you’ve never met anyone you liked?”

“I’ve had two girlfriends before.”

“Oh, my God, two!” Meg exclaimed and laughed. “And you say you’re not a player!”

Castiel chuckled. He figured that, compared to most people, his number of past relationships seemed very low.

“They were long term relationships,” he continued. He didn’t know why he needed to explain himself to Meg, except that he felt that she was waiting something from him, something he couldn’t really give her after only night of knowing her. “We were friends and then we started dating.”

Meg hummed at that comment. She turned another corner and this time, they found themselves walking into a small park. Castiel worried for a second that they were going to be robbed, but Meg was already getting ahead of him, so he hurried up to follow her.

“Maybe that’s my problem,” she reflected. “I don’t think I was friends with any of my exes.”

She didn’t say a number, but Castiel figured it as bigger than two. She stopped over a small stone bridge over a small pond. It was quiet and Castiel figured all the ducks were asleep at that hour. She leaned over the rails and looked at the dark waters underneath.

“Then again, that didn’t work out for you either,” she pointed out. “Why did you break up?”

That was a complicated question. He leaned next to Meg, not as close as they had been on the booth of the bar, but still close enough that he could feel the warmth radiating from her body.

“April was my high school sweetheart and we remained together through college,” Castiel said. “But in that time, she changed. She was a very sweet, caring girl, but by the end of it she… became a person that I didn’t want to be around. She was manipulative, she would lie to my face, steal money that I had saved aside to pay for bills so she could go out with her sorority friends.”

“She cheated on you?”

“Honestly, I don’t know if she did,” Castiel answered. “And the fact that I can’t tell you for sure should be indication enough that something was irremediably broken between us.”

“Yeah,” she sighed. “I get it.”

But she didn’t elaborate and she stayed in silence, so Castiel deduced she was waiting for him to continue.

“Then, after a few years, I met Daphne. We used to jog in the same park, we started talking. Then we dated for maybe five, six years…”

“Oh, my God.” Meg raised her eyebrows. “That’s… that’s a lot.”

“It is. And people kept asking us when we were going to get married.” He stopped and thought about it. Now that he was telling this story, with the benefit of hindsight and the many years’ he’d had since to heal, he could admit it to himself: “I don’t know if I proposed because I really wanted to spend the rest of my life with her or because everybody around us thought we should.”

“Wait, you proposed?” She turned to better look at him. “That’s pretty damn serious.”

“I was very serious,” Castiel said. “But she said no.”

“Oh, that must have hurt.”

“It did. But once she laid out her reasoning, I couldn’t tell her she was wrong. She thought we weren’t in love anymore, that the spark had gone and that at that point, we were still together because it was a comfortable routine. She was looking for the right time to bring it up, but me proposing forced her to do it sooner.”

“So you bowed out like a gentleman.”

“What else was there left for me to do?” Castiel asked. “I was willing to try other things for her to feel like we could keep going, but she wasn’t. So… we let go.”

Meg made another humming sound, like she was weighing what he’d told her to pass some sort of judgement over him. Castiel knew Dean did that, that he thought he was boring and “vanilla” because he’d only had two girlfriends and no one-night stands or shorter relationships in the in-between. And maybe he was, but he didn’t care. His experiences with April and Daphne, though hurtful in the moment, were things that had happened and he didn’t regret. Which was why he’d had no problem telling them to this virtual stranger.

He also had no problem being alone now and for the foreseeable future. He told Meg this.

“I don’t understand people who think their life isn’t complete unless they have a significant other.”

“It is nice to have someone to cuddle up to in the middle of the night,” Meg pointed out. Castiel couldn’t argue with that.

“Yes, but a relationship shouldn’t be the end all, be all,” he said. “It should be a plus. Like sprinkles on top of an ice cream or marshmallows in your hot cocoa. Yes, it makes them tastier, but they’re not… essential.”

“Huh,” Meg muttered. She seemed to be reflecting upon all of this. “And what about sex?”

“What about it?” Castiel asked, frowning.

“I mean, we’re talking about long-term, almost-got-married relationships,” Meg pointed out. “But I don’t think that was what Dean and Abaddon had in mind when they left together. Or Sam and Ruby, for that matter.”

“You’re right, it probably wasn’t,” Castiel agreed, with a chuckle.

“So how does that feature in your vision of life and love and everything it involves?”

“To be honest with you, I’ve never seen the appeal of one-night stands.”

“Have you ever had one?”

There was a mocking tone in her voice, and Castiel couldn’t blame her. For everything he’d told her, it was obvious she thought he’d never done anything like that.

And she was right.

“I’ve… tried,” he confessed, cringing at the memory of how badly those occasions had gone. “I couldn’t go through with them. I would always back out or do something that would upset the other person?”

“Like what?”

“Like… offering them my number?” Castiel said.

Meg seems to find this hilarious, because she laughed in his face.

“That’s not how one-night stands go! It’s literally in the name!”

“Yes, I learned that,” Castiel admitted, lowering his eyes. But he was smiling as well. “Point is, I could never be in a relationship that was purely sexual and not meant to last. And there’s a lot of people who want the exact opposite of that, and that’s just fine too. But it’s not for me.”

Meg suppressed her last chuckles. But when she spoke again, she did it seriously:

“I get it. And just so you know, purely sexual things… they’re not all what they’re cracked up to be. They lose their appeal after a while.”

Castiel didn’t ask her how she knew that.

They said nothing for a while. They stood on the small bridge, over the dark waters, in the silence only broken by some faraway cricket or the rustle of the breeze on the branches above their head.

And it was nice. It was pleasant. Castiel could’ve stood there until the sun break, not saying anything or doing anything other than enjoy the quietness.

But after a while, Meg checked her phone.

“It’s been two hours,” she said. “I think Ruby and Sam must be done by now.”

“Do you want me to walk you home as well?”

She glanced at him and for a second, he thought she was going to refuse. And despite the nice chat and the bonding over cannibalism jokes, he figured that was fair enough. They were still strangers, after all.

“You know what? Sure, why not?” she decided in the end. “We’re only two blocks away.”

It was more like a block and a half. Castiel walked her right up to the building’s door, at which point she stopped and turned towards him.

“Well, this has been interesting.”

“It has, yes,” Castiel agreed. “It was very fortuitous, but I’m glad I got the chance to meet you. You seem like a very… remarkable person to be around.”

Meg tilted her head, as if she didn’t know whether to take that as a compliment or not. Castiel thought he was going to ruin the moment by explaining that he’d meant it as such.

“Well… good night,” he said and turned to leave.

“Cas.”

He stopped.

“Give me your cellphone,” she requested, stretching her hand.

“Okay?” Castiel said, patting his pockets until he found it. “Why?”

Meg just typed something on the screen and handed it back to him.

“I guess you could call me,” she said. “If you’re ever in want of… some companionship.”

“I… I think I would like that,” he mumbled.

She smirked at him one last time and got inside of her building. Castiel looked down to see that she had added herself to his contacts, under the name “Meg Masters” and added a little purple devil emoticon next to her name.

* * *

On Monday, he reconvened with Sam and Dean for their lunch break on a café near the company’s building. They both had very different stories about how their Friday nights had gone.

“It was good!” Sam said, in a tone that indicated there was a but coming. “It was okay. We went to her apartment, we, uh… had fun.”

“You got laid!” Dean congratulated him, on a tone a little too loud for the café. “That’s my boy!”

“Yeah,” Sam said, with a chuckle, his cheeks turning slightly red. “It was kind of awkward the next day, though. I told her I was leaving, she pulled the blankets over her head and told me to do it quietly. Kind of cold, but okay. So I got dressed as silently as I could, and then I walked out… and the roommate was there in the kitchen.”

“Meg,” Castiel said, heeding Sam’s story for the first time since he’d begun telling it. It wasn’t that he didn’t care, it was just that tales about sexual escapades did very little to hold his attention.

“Yeah, I don’t think I caught her name,” Sam confessed. “Anyway, she told me she was making fruit smoothies for breakfast and asked if I wanted one for the road. I said sure, why not. And she goes and turns on the loudest blender in the entire world. That thing it was… it was like it had a bike motor or something. Ruby comes out of her room in just her underwear and she starts screaming at the roommate for waking her up while she laughs and serves me the smoothie in a plastic cup with a goddamn lid. They were still fighting when I left. Well, Ruby was still screaming, while her friend…”

“Meg,” Castiel repeated.

“Yes, her,” Sam agreed. “Anyway, she laughed in Ruby’s face the entire time.”

Castiel didn’t know why he caught himself smiling at that. It just sounded like something Meg would do, even though he had no way of knowing that. He’d only met her for a few hours that night.

“How did yours go, Dean?” Sam asked.

“Oh, man.” Dean grimaced as he chewed on his burger. “Man, it was _weird_. So we went to her apartment too, right? And we were getting it on! We were making out, hot and heavy, clothes were coming off.”

“Alright, we don’t need the play by play…” Sam tried to protest.

“We were in her bedroom, we were lying on the bed, ready to go,” Dean said, despite the request for less details. “And she tells me she has something special in mind that we could do. I’m like sure, I’m down for whatever you’re down! She gets up, goes to her closet and she takes out this… this… thing.”

Dean made a pained face, as if the memory of it was enough to disturb him. Sam and Castiel exchanged a look and Castiel was relieved to notice that, for once, Sam was just as confused as him.

“What thing?” Sam asked, frowning.

“This… this thing, like a… like a big, black… you know.”

“No, we… we don’t know,” Castiel said. “That’s why we’re asking.”

Dean took a deep breath.

“It was a…”

And Castiel was certain he said something else, but he dropped his voice so low that Cas couldn’t make it out.

“A what?”

“A dildo, okay?!” Dean practically shouted. “It was a fucking dildo!”

“Oh, my God!” Sam exclaimed and dropped his fork on the plate.

Castiel took out his phone and started typing on it.

“Seriously?!” Dean asked him.

“I don’t know what that is,” Castiel said. He looked at the screen and understood immediately why Dean had been freaked out. “Oh. Okay, then. What did she… what did she want to do with that?”

“Make an educated guess!”

Castiel didn’t want to do that, so he simply put the phone away.

“What did you do?” Sam asked.

“She went to the bathroom to look for some… stuff and I picked up all my clothes and ran out of there,” Dean said, shaking his head. “No way I was going to let her shove that up my ass!”

Sam burst into laughter immediately.

“It’s not funny, Sam!” Dean shouted. “It’s not funny at all!”

Sam continued laughing and Castiel couldn’t help but to join him. Just the thought of Dean, who was always bragging about his sexual prowess and conquests, fleeing some woman’s apartment in a half-undressed state…

“You guys suck, you know that? You’re not my friend!” he accused Cas, pointing at him. “You’re not my brother! You’re both jerks!”

Sam and Castiel still took some minutes to calm down. Dean glared at them through the entire thing.

“Yeah, yeah, hilarious!” he exclaimed, rolling his eyes at them. “What about you, Cas?”

“What about me, what?” Castiel asked, still chuckling a little.

“You left the bar with… what was her name again? Maggie?”

“Meg,” Castiel corrected him. He took a sip from his water. “Yes. We went for a walk and we talked for a while.”

“And?” Dean insisted, raising his eyebrows.

“And then, she… went home,” Castiel said, frowning, not sure why the conversation had taken this turn.

“That’s it?” Even Sam seemed a little disappointed. “I thought you guys had really hit it off at the bar. Like, she was laughing a lot.”

Castiel didn’t want to explain that was because they were making jokes about Abaddon eating Dean. Which had ended up happening, in a way, he supposed.

“Well, you know, I’m not… I don’t do that sort of thing, Sam.” Castiel shrug and took a bite out of his sandwich.

“It’s so weird,” Dean said.

“Yes, Dean, I know what you think…”

“No, I mean about Meg,” Dean replied. “I swear; I’ve seen her somewhere before.”

While Dean tapped his fingers on the table trying to remember, Castiel was reminded of something else.

“Oh, she did give me her number.”

“What?”

“Really?”

Both the brothers were suddenly looking at him in a way that made Castiel shift awkwardly in his seat.

“Have you called her yet?” Sam asked.

“No, no, no, don’t call!” Dean said. “It’s been almost three days at this point.”

“What does that have to do…?” Castiel started asking, but Dean didn’t let him continue:

“You have to text her. Make plans to meet up with her this week or the next,” he instructed. “That way it’ll look like you’re playing it casual.”

“What am I playing at?” Castiel asked, frowning. “I don’t…”

“Well, don’t you want to see her again?”

“I mean… yes?” Castiel said, hesitant. “She is a very charming woman. And we did laugh a lot. But I don’t want her to think I’m interested in her in a way that I’m not.”

“Well… how do you know you’re not interested in her in that way if you don’t get to know her better?” Sam suggested.

And that, more than any of Dean’s arguments about Castiel “needing to get some”, was what convinced him to text Meg.

* * *

To his surprise, Meg answered quickly and it was her who suggested a place for them to meet up: a restaurant near her bike repair shop, where they could meet during their lunch break the next week. She arrived with the same black leather jacket as before, but she took it off, revealing a tattoo in the form of a lotus flower in her shoulder.

“Well, hello, you,” she said, sitting down in front of him.

“Hello.” Castiel found himself smiling at her. “It’s good to see you again.”

And it was. So good, in fact, that they decided to do it again the following week.

He found out it was easy to talk to Meg. She had been a little closed off on their first encounter, but after another lunch and a cup of coffee, Castiel started finding more and more things about her: the bike repair shop where she worked with Ruby and Abaddon actually belonged to her. Yes, she did have a bike, a classic Harley-Davison that she was as proud of as Dean was of his Impala. She had saved up from her former work as a model to buy it all.

“Huh,” Castiel told her when that topic came up. “So maybe that’s where Dean knows you from.”

“Maybe,” Meg said, and she’d quickly changed the topic.

Abaddon’s actual name was Josie. Abaddon was her gang name (Meg dealt with a lot of people who were on motorcycle gangs) and yes, scaring men off her apartment was apparently a usual thing for her, though Meg didn’t say if it was on purpose or not. And yes, Ruby was always cranky in the morning. Talking to her, it became obvious that she loved them both as much as Castiel loved Sam and Dean.

“They’re the best friends a person could ask for,” Castiel said. “After I broke up with Daphne, they were kind enough to let me crash with them until I found an apartment for myself. They didn’t even charge me rent for all the time I spent there. They’re more like my brothers than my actual brothers.”

“I feel you. I have a brother, but since our dad died, it’s like we don’t even talk anymore.”

It became a routine thing, to see each other once, sometimes twice a week.

One Saturday morning, they found themselves in the same park near Meg’s home, because she insisted there was a guy there who made “the best ice cream” and Castiel was not opposed to seeing it in the light of day.

It turned out it was a very nice place, with people walking with their children and their dogs, jogging or just walking easily as they enjoyed the warm spring day. They stood on the queue to get their ice creams and then found a bench where to sit down to eat them.

“Sprinkles?” she offered, opening one of the packages that the ice cream man had given to them. Castiel shook her head, so she shrugged and poured it all on her own cone.

“This is really nice,” he commented. “And you’re right, this is some really good ice cream.”

“Yeah,” Meg said, but she seemed distracted. “I gotta say, though, this is the weirdest fifth date I’ve ever had.”

Castiel choked on his scream.

“Date?” he repeated, surprised. “This isn’t… is it?” he asked, because it wouldn’t be unlike him to miss out on some vital subtext that was crystal clear to other people.

“The first few times, I had my doubts if they’d been dates or not,” Meg said. “But we’ve been seeing each other pretty regularly and texting every day and… I mean, by this point most guys would be taking me to a fancy restaurant and hinting they want me to come home with them if I hadn’t already. You haven’t even tried to kiss me.”

“That’s because we’re not… dating,” Castiel replied, mentally going through all of their interactions to try and determine what had made Meg thought so. “We’ve only known each other like… two months. Why do you think we’re…?”

He trailed off as Meg crooked an eyebrow at him.

“So, what exactly are we doing, then?”

“We’re… seeing each other. Hanging out. As friends,” Castiel explained, realizing how lame those excuses were just as they came out of his mouth. “I thought you didn’t want to have a relationship!”

“Well, no, I didn’t,” Meg admitted, with a shrug. She didn’t seem offended that Castiel told her they weren’t dating, just mildly confused. “But you know how it is. One day you’ve sworn off boyfriends forever, the next you meet a really cute guy with beautiful blue eyes who is an absolute angel on top of it and you change your mind. Shit happens.”

Castiel stared at his ice cream. Goddammit, he really liked spending time with Meg and he was sure, from past experiences, that what he was going to say next was going to blow everything up. But he couldn’t lead her on.

“I actually don’t know how it is,” Castiel said. He took a bite of his ice cream to prevent it from melting and tasted it while he tried to find the words to explain himself. “I’ve told you before how I’ve only had two serious relationships and there’s a reason for that. I don’t just… _know_.”

“Know what?” Meg asked, tilting her head.

Castiel sighed. This was going to be harder than he thought.

“I can’t go on a date and say ‘_Well, I had good chemistry with this person, I’m sure we’ll sleep together some day’_. I’ve tried. And it’s not just that I can’t tell at a glance if a person is attractive to me or not. I can’t know if I’ll fall in love with them or not. With April and Daphne was different because I got to know them both very well before we dated. April and I practically grew up together. I knew Daphne for about a year before I felt like I should ask her out.” He shook his head. “Dean says I’m just too picky. Sam says he understands not falling in love with someone right away, but that I should at least be able to tell if I like someone romantically. But I just… don’t.”

His ice cream had practically melted in his hand. He only realized when he felt cold on his fingers and he had to stick it out to prevent any of it from staining his pants.

“I’m sorry if this doesn’t make any sense to you,” he added.

Meg was kind enough to pass him a napkin. She was pensive.

“Huh. Well, okay, then. We can do things your way,” she concluded and kept eating her ice cream as if Castiel said nothing out of the ordinary.

He finished what was left of his so fast he got brain freeze, but as soon as he was able to speak again, he asked:

“What exactly do you mean by that?”

Meg was down to her cone by now. She took a bite out it and chewed it for a while before answering.

“I mean, I have rushed into relationships before, and I’ve been burned each and every time,” Meg said. “And I like you and I’m willing to give your slow and steady approach a chance.”

Castiel wanted to argue that it wasn’t an approach as much as it was just a part of who he was, but he was too relieved that Meg wasn’t running out on him while yelling he’d given her false hopes.

“But we’re not… we’re not dating,” he pointed out, because he wanted to make that clear. “Not right now.”

“I know,” Meg said, with a shrug. “It’s fine. But you know I am open to date you, so when you’re open to date me, you just have to say the word. We’re like friends with… possible future benefits.” She winced, but then she smiled again. “Oh, that’s a terrible name. We need to find a better name.”

“Uh… companions?” Castiel suggested.

Meg caught what he was referring to and laughed.

“Companions,” she approved. “Are you going to eat your cone?”

* * *

Spring came and went, and so did summer. Dean invited Cas to a road trip with Sam during their vacation and Meg came along at Castiel’s bequest. They got lost somewhere in Colorado and Meg and Dean argued all the way about which motors were better and the correct way to treat a vehicle. Castiel thought it was a pretty inconsequential argument, but Dean then told him that “his girlfriend was a bitch”. Castiel didn’t bother to correct him, but he did like that Meg was headstrong and willing to defend whatever position she took.

During the autumn, Sam started dating a woman named Sara and then decided to move in with her. Meg showed up with a truck that she’d borrowed for one of her friends and helped put some boxes on the back, joking at Dean that now he was going to have the apartment all to himself to be pounded as much as he wanted. Dean didn’t find it funny, but Castiel and Sam laughed.

On Christmas, Castiel invited Meg to his apartment, because Sam and Dean were out of town and so were Ruby and Abaddon. He would’ve travelled to see his family, but his father had decided that taking a cruise through South America was more important and he wasn’t particularly close to any of his siblings. Not enough to risk getting trapped with them and all his small nephews if there was a storm, in any case. He though Meg was going to see her brother, but she surprised him by showing up at his door on Christmas Eve with a bottle of rum (“for the eggnog”) and a neatly wrapped present under her arm.

She gave him an overcoat he’d seen at the mall one time they went shopping together and he gave her a charm to hang around her neck. Then they sat down on his couch in their socks and watched Christmas-themed movies. Meg chose a horror one of a family being killed off bloodily by Krampus, Castiel went for a more familiar classic.

“Really? _It’s a Wonderful Life_?” she scoffed when he put it on. “Why?”

“I like it,” Castiel said, pressing play on his remote control. “I like this idea of our lives touching more people than we can imagine. Doing things that for us are small, but for others make a huge difference.”

“I haven’t drunk enough eggnog for this,” she complained, even though they’d already downed half a bowl of it already.

“I watched your gore fest, you better buckle up and watch this,” he shot back.

“There was barely any gore in it!” Meg complained. “But fine, I guess.”

Meg maintained her snarky comments to a minimum, but that didn’t mean she didn’t make some, especially when they ran out of eggnog.

“I’m going to start calling you Clarence,” she decided, when the movie was practically over and she could barely keep her eyes open.

“Why?”

“He’s an angel, you’re an angel.”

“That’s… I don’t think that’s enough, Meg.”

“… well, makes sense to me,” she slurred, as her head fell heavily on his shoulder.

Castiel didn’t move for a moment or two, her hot breath tingling in his neck. He’d known her for months, at this point, and he’d never really noticed the arch of her eyebrows, the very faint freckles on the bridge of her nose, the shape of her mouth…

A shiver went down his spine. He stopped those thoughts before they could go any further.

“Meg, I think you should go to bed,” he mumbled. She just snuggled even closer to him.

“Don’t wanna. I’m comfortable here.”

“Okay. I’m taking you to bed,” he decided.

“Ha! Bet not a lot of girls hear that from you…”

She didn’t resist when he put an arm around her waist and stood her up. She curled up over his cover the second he sat her down on the bed, so Castiel had to get a couple of extra blankets from his closet to make sure she wasn’t cold.

Afterwards, he stayed next to the bed, watching her in awe as a warm he wasn’t expecting started forming in his chest. She looked so peaceful when she was sleep. When she was awake, her face was in constant movement, to the point one could deduce her thoughts if they just watched her close enough. But now she seemed peaceful. Calm. He wondered briefly what it would be like to wake up to her face like that every morning…

It was the eggnog, he decided as he marched out of the room and gently closed the door behind him. The eggnog had definitely gone to his head.

But the following morning, he was awakened by some clattering in his kitchen. There was frost in the window and a small figure moving in his kitchen. It was Meg, of course. She looked small because she had found one of his sweaters, and her blonde hair (she had admitted at some point that she bleached it, but that she was a natural brunette) was adorably puffy around her face.

“Hey, Merry Christmas,” she said, when she noticed him moving in his couch. “Found your cocoa.”

Castiel kicked the blankets aside and walked up to her.

“Cocoa for breakfast? After everything we drank?” he asked as she already placed the mug in front of him.

“Well, what’s Christmas if you don’t catch an indigestion?” She shrugged and pushed a bowl full of marshmallows towards him.

Castiel grabbed a handful and threw them in his mug. As she leaned forwards on the table and started telling him about the weird dream she’d had the night before, it occurred to him for the first time that Meg was one of the most beautiful women he’d ever seen.

* * *

He waited out the entirety of January to make sure it wasn’t a fluke. By the end of it, he knew.

“I think I’m ready,” he told Meg on the phone.

“Ready for what?”

Castiel took in a deep breath. She wasn’t going to make this easy for him, was she?

“To… go out. An official, actual date with you.” He stopped and then added: “That is, if you still want to, of course.”

It had been months. Almost a year since that night at the bar when they’d first met. Meg could’ve very easily changed her mind and not told him to not hurt his feelings. What an idiot he was, thinking that she would just wait around for him…

“Okay,” she told him. “When’s a good time for you?”

Castiel’s stomach did a backflip.

“Is Friday okay?”

“That’s Valentine’s Day,” Meg pointed out with a laugh. “Could it be any more cliché if we start dating on Valentine’s Day?”

“Humor me,” Castiel asked, with a smile. Of course she would notice that.

“Alright, then. Do I need to wear anything special?”

Castiel was tempted to tell her she could’ve worn a burlap sack and still look adorable, but maybe it was too soon to start expressing those sorts of thoughts.

After the call ended, he fell back on his couch, a warm, soft feeling of happiness extending towards his chest.

It lasted exactly forty-eight hours. On Thursday evening, Dean called him.

“Dude, are you home?”

“Umh.” Castiel looked down at his boxer briefs and stained grey shirt that he put on when he wasn’t planning on going out anywhere or receiving anyone. “Yes, but…”

“This is urgent. I need to see you.”

“What’s this about?” Castiel asked, because him and Dean had a different parameter of urgency.

“Meg.”

He needed to say no more. Twenty minutes later, Castiel had put on some jeans and Dean was walking into his apartment with a panicked expression in his eyes.

“So, I was going through some old stuff of mine, because now that Sam's moved out I have all this space, right?” he explained. “And I found this!”

He took a rectangular box from inside of his jacket. It was a DVD box, but not for a normal movie. It was called “Naughty Nurses 3” and judging by the scantily dressed women in the cover who were all groping each other’s breasts, it wasn’t PG-13.

“Dean, what the hell…”

“Look at this!” Dean said, pointing at a brunette woman on the side. “Doesn’t she look like someone we know?”

Castiel blinked. Her face was a little longer, like she was thinner back then, and the heavy make-up in her eyes and lips made her look a little different. Still, she had an uncanny resemblance to…

“This can’t be Meg.”

“Cas, I didn’t want to believe it either, but…”

“She can’t be!” Castiel protested.

“Okay, okay!” Dean said, raising his hands in the air. “Look, I’m just saying maybe you should ask her about this.”

“I’m not going to,” Castiel said, annoyed. “Because this isn’t Meg!”

Dean didn’t try to contradict him. He just took in a deep breath.

“Okay, but…”

“And even if she was Meg,” Castiel interrupted him. “What about it? By your own admission, there’s nothing wrong with porn.”

“I mean, yeah, I guess,” Dean said, but he didn’t sound convinced. “But isn’t it a little bit… weird? To think there’s a lot of dudes out there rubbing one out to your girlfriend?”

Castiel was three seconds away from punching. Instead, he politely asked him to leave his apartment.

“I’m just saying, this is something you need to talk about with her,” Dean said, as Castiel marched towards the door and opened it to indicate him he could go. “Fine, man. Don’t shoot the messenger.”

After he left, Castiel allowed himself to freak out a little.

Meg had mentioned she’d worked as a model, but not this. Why hadn’t she said it? Was she ashamed of it?

Of course, there was the distinct possibility that woman wasn’t her, but just someone who looked a like her. Castiel needed more.

He hated porn movies. He’d watched some in his teenage years, lead by a very natural curiosity, and they’d done nothing for him. He didn’t understand the appeal to watching two complete strangers grinding against each other in what had to be very uncomfortable positions and moaning in an exaggerated way.

But now, he greeted his teeth and pressed play on his computer. He knew he wouldn’t be able to fall asleep until he was certain. But then, he didn’t know he was going to look at Meg in the face if it turned out to be true…?

The DVD froze and skipped a lot of scenes, since it was clear that Dean had watched it more than once. In any case, there didn’t seem to be much a plot that he was missing, except for the titular naughty nurses making a bet about who could fuck more patients in less time. And yes, the brunette nurse’s voice sounded a bit like Meg’s, but she’d spoke two lines and that didn’t mean…

She had a sex scene with a doctor not three minutes in. When she took off her uniform to reveal she was wearing nothing underneath, Castiel froze the frame. On her arm, clear as day, there was a tattoo of a lotus flower, identical to Meg’s.

* * *

Friday went too slow and too fast at the same time. Castiel spent the day sitting at his desk, staring at his screen, unable to concentrate in any of the work that was placed in front of him and checking the clock every two minutes. And finally, when it was time to go home and get ready for his date with Meg, he felt like it had come to soon.

Luckily for him, even though his mind hadn’t stopped short-circuiting since the previous evening, his body knew what to do. He jumped in the shower and let the water rain on his head to calm him down. He had chosen the suit and the tie he would wear (the blue one, the one that matched his eyes because Meg had said they were beautiful one time). He shaved his five o’clock shadow and stared at himself in the mirror for several minutes.

Then he decided that it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter at all. This was Meg’s past, something she obviously hadn’t wanted to share with him and he was going to pretend that he’d never found out about it.

And she looked breathtaking in her purple dress when she came out of her building.

“What do you think?” she asked, with a twirl that made the skirt flow and tangle between her legs. “I’m going to freeze, but it’s pretty, right?”

“Yes,” Castiel smiled. “You’re very pretty.”

He had no idea why he thought it was going to change anything. Meg was the same as always, the same wonderful, charming, funny woman that he’d met that night at the bar, the same one he’d slowly but surely become so close to in the following months.

It was, what she would later call, “a traditional date”. They ate in a medium restaurant, not too fancy, but not too casual either, which was walking distance to Castiel’s apartment. She stole food from his plate while they were having dinner and made him laugh until he choked on his water. They talked about the crazy client Meg had that day at the workshop and about the woman who keep stealing Castiel’s yogurt from the office’s fridge. They split the check and the tip.

It was the same as always, but also different. Because when they walked outside after the desert, Meg stretched her hand to grabs him.

“I’m cold,” she complained.

So Castiel took off his jacket and draped over her shoulders. The streets were frozen and slippery and this was the excuse she used to walk very close to him and hold on to his arm while they made their way back to the car. Castiel could smell her perfume, a mixture of citrus and mint that was just as sharp as her.

It was easy. He didn’t feel nervous, or bad, or weird. It was easy, because it was Meg. He opened the door for her and sat behind the wheel.

“So… this was…”

“A really nice first date,” Meg said, with smile. “Kudos, Clarence. You sure know how to plan them.”

He laughed at the comment. If she’d only knew the hours he’d spent reading Yelp reviews to decide the place where he wanted to take her…

“I’m glad you enjoyed yourself,” he said, stretching his hand. Meg grabbed almost immediately, intertwining her fingers with his and squeezing just a little.

“Would you think poorly of me if I tell you to take me to your place?” she asked.

“I could never think poorly of you,” he assured her. “But Meg…”

“I know, I know. You’re still not sure.” She didn’t sound offended or angry about it, just like she was stating a fact about him that she knew all too well. But Castiel thought he saw a flash of… something in her eyes when she looked up at him and added: “Look, we don’t have to do anything. Maybe have a coffee or something. If it gets late, I can sleep on your couch.”

“You know never I never let you.”

“That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t offer,” she shot back. “What I’m trying to say is… I’ve been looking forwards to this for a long, long while. And I don’t want this night to end just yet.”

He didn’t, either.

It started snowing as they headed inside the building. They landed on Meg’s shoulders and hair. She looked up, sticking her tongue out to see if she could catch one. Castiel, who’d gone around the car, stopped for a second to look at her and thought back about Dean’s comment about a lot of unknown men jerking off to her.

And once again, he decided he didn’t care. They’d seen her like that, but they could never see her like this: happy, playful, beautiful. His heart skipped in his chest when Meg turned to look at him.

“What?” she asked.

Castiel walked up to her and cupped her face with his hands.

“I hope you don’t think poorly of me, either,” he said.

“For what?”

Instead of answering, Castiel showed her. He lowered his face and his lips met hers. They were the only warm thing in that freezing February night, and when her body shivered against his, when she pressed herself against him and opened her mouth to deepen the kiss, Castiel still wasn’t sure if he loved her.

But he was a little step closer to knowing.

* * *

Meg took off her high heel shoes the second they crossed the door and tossed them across Castiel’s foyer.

“Thank God, these things were killing me!”

“Why did you wear them, then?”

“I don’t know. They matched the dress.”

He marched into the kitchen laughing and grabbed the coffee from the cabinets.

“I ran out of stevia,” he informed her. He’d forgotten when he started buying it because Meg always asked for it when she was over there. Another little detail of her burrowing into his life. “Is sugar okay or will you just drink it black?”

There was no answer from the living room.

“Meg?” he insisted.

Nothing.

Castiel left the sugar jar on the counter and moved to see.

“Meg, did you hear me…?” he started asking, but the words froze on his throat.

Meg had her back to him, leaning over his computer. Castiel could hear the faint moans from the movie. He’d forgotten he’d left it inside his laptop, with the DVD box right outside in plain view. He had wondered about putting it away that morning as he left for the office, but he couldn’t bring himself to even think about it.

And now, all the butterflies that had been fluttering in his stomach since kissing Meg suddenly froze and died as she slowly turned to stare at him.

There was something new in her expression, something Castiel never thought he would see in it.

Fury. Plain and simple. She smiled, but it was a bitter, pale imitation of the way she usually did it.

“Well, you saw my movie!” she said, with a sarcasm so cutting Castiel wasn’t sure how it didn’t kill him on the spot.

None of the excuses that came to his mind reached his lips complete. ‘_This isn’t what it looks like’. ‘I didn’t watch it’. ‘This is all Dean’s fault.’_

“Meg, this isn’t… I didn’t…” he stammered instead.

“What did you think, huh?” Meg asked, taking a step towards him. “You liked it? You got off on it?”

“No.” Castiel shook his head. “Meg, please, listen…”

“Any particular scenes you want to recreate?”

She did something very strange then. She reached for the zipper on the back of her dress and pulled it down. The dress pooled on the floor, leaving her standing in nothing but her underwear in the middle of his living room, matching black panties and bras.

Castiel quickly looked away.

“Meg, I swear…”

“Come on, Clarence, don’t be shy!” she said, stepping closer to him. “I know I don’t look that good anymore, but then again, I was nineteen and barely eating then. And doing lots of _vigorous_ exercise, of course.”

“I didn’t even… please, put your dress back on…”

“Why? Wasn’t this what you wanted?” she asked, her voice still bitter and cutting. She was standing inches away from him now, still with that twisted smile on her lips. But her voice finally started to betray the rage inside of her. “And what about all that bullshit about how you don’t care for sex, how you don’t fall in love with people unless you meet them first?”

“It’s not bullshit…”

“Well, you’re definitely a better actor than I am!” she exclaimed, with a laugh that sounded hollow. “You fooled me into thinking you were different, that you actually cared about me! I’m such a fucking idiot, aren’t I?”

“Meg, no, of course not.” Castiel shook his head, desperate. He didn’t know what to say to make her stop, how to make her believe him. “I do care about you. Please…”

Meg put her arms around his shoulders and tried to pull him down to kiss him, but Castiel remained as immobile as he could.

“Come on!” she shouted at him. “Come on, isn’t this what you wanted?! To fuck your favorite porn star?!”

“Stop,” he begged. “Meg, stop, please.”

She let go of him, only for her fist to impact against his chest. Castiel jumped, more at the surprise than at the hurt. Meg’s eyes were wide now, as if she also hadn’t planned that, but now that she had started, she didn’t seem like planned to stop. She raised her other fist and hit him again, and again, and again, until Castiel managed to catch her by the wrists. And even then she kept struggling against him, trying to escape his grip. She was still screaming, though nothing intelligible: just angry, formless screams as her face turned red and the tears started rolling her cheeks, black and ugly as her makeup smudged.

“Let go of me!” she bellowed at one point.

“No,” Castiel replied, softly. Because his heart was breaking, because it was the most terrible thing to see her like that.

And he couldn’t let go. Not because doing so was guarantee that she was going to walk out of there and he would lose her forever, not because he couldn’t let her go in the state she was in. But because this demon screaming behind Meg’s face was another part of her, another part that she kept repressed and hidden, a part that held things Castiel couldn’t even begin to fathom that had happened to her, that had hurt her.

And if he did love her, he was going to learn to love the demon as well.

So he did the only thing he could really do: he embraced her. He ignored the way she kept trying to escape his arms, the way her fists hit against his back. He hugged her and whispered against her hair that it was okay, that everything was okay, that it was going to be okay.

Meg surrendered suddenly. She went limp, with her head hidden against his chest, her body shaking with strangled sobs. Her entire weight crashed against him and Castiel’s knees gave out. He fell down as delicately as he could, still holding unto to Meg and repeating those words like a mantra:

“It’s okay. Meg, it’s okay. It’s going to be okay.”

He didn’t know is she would believe him. But it was important for him to say it.

* * *

It took her a while to calm down. Castiel helped her to sit down on the couch and offered her a hoodie and pajama pants of his to put on. She accepted them and got dressed in complete silence, still hiccupping now and then, while he discreetly looked away.

“I think I have some tea,” he said. It sounded like a terribly pathetic offering after the outburst, but it was the only thing he could think of. “I heard tea is soothing. Would you like some?”

Meg sat down on his couch, as far away from him as he could. She folded her knees against her chest and remained immobile and silent like that.

Castiel swallow to try to make the bump in his throat disappear.

“Meg?” he called softly. “Do you want some tea?” he insisted. “Or do you want me to… do you want to leave?” he asked, cringing that he only now realized she might not want to be there at all. “I can drive you home… or call you a taxi…”

“No,” Meg croaked, her face still turned away from him.

“No, okay.” Castiel sighed deeply and stood up. “I’ll make you the tea.”

He came back five minutes with tea and some napkins. Meg hadn’t moved from the spot where he’d left her and barely look up when Castiel offered her the mug, but she did take the napkins. He left the tea on the coffee table while Meg wiped her still reddened face and blew her nose. Her eyes were puffy and still wet.

Castiel sat on the other side of the couch. Now that she was calm… or calmer, at least, he felt like he owed her an explanation.

“The DVD isn’t mine. Dean found it and brought it to show it to me yesterday. I don’t think why he thought it was necessary for me to know this…”

“Well, he’s just watching out for you,” Meg said. Her voice sounded raspier and more broken than usual. “Isn’t it weird that your girlfriend is a porn star?”

“No, it isn’t,” Castiel affirmed. “Everybody has a past. I don’t care for yours, Meg, except as far as it went to make you the person you are in the present. And that person is just amazing.”

Meg scoffed, as if she didn’t believe a word of what he was saying. That hurt more than anything.

“You didn’t bring it up,” she commented.

“Because I figured if you hadn’t told me, it was because you didn’t want me to know.”

“So you were just going to act surprised when I dropped the bomb of ‘_Oh, yeah, turns out I was an adult film actress for a while there?’_.”

“I… I really don’t know,” Castiel admitted, though he thought it was important that she was planning on telling him eventually. “I was just trying to respect your privacy.”

“Well.” She wiped the new batch of tears that was flowing down her cheeks, and when she spoke again, she almost sounded like her old self again: “If you saw up to the scene where I fuck Dr. Cockmorton, I don’t think there’s much privacy left to speak of.”

It was sad that she was trying to joke about it and not make it seem like a big deal when it was pretty obvious that it was.

“No.” Castiel slid closer and hesitated before placing a hand on her kneed. “That was just… your body. Anybody can expose their body. You still have all the things you haven’t told me, and you don’t have to tell me any of them.”

Meg stared at him, her mouth twisted up.

“Ah, damn,” she complained. “I wish you hadn’t said that.”

“Why not?” Castiel asked, confused.

“Because now I _want_ to tell you.”

“You really don’t have to…”

“Pass me the damn box, will you?”

Castiel did so. Meg looked down at the picture of the naughty nurses for so long he thought she was going to change her mind, but then she started talking:

“I didn’t lie about the modeling. That was the original plan, but it wasn’t going too well. It was going so bad, in fact, that I had no problem staying thin because I literally only ate once a day. One day, this skeevy photographer named Crowley gets me a gig to model some bathing suits. Then he offered me an extra five hundred dollars if I lost the top. And another five hundred for losing the bottom as well.” She sighed deeply. “Then he handed me his card and he said they were always looking for new actresses.”

Castiel didn’t say anything. He couldn’t imagine how desperate she must have been to accept a deal like that.

“I didn’t think it was a big deal. I wasn’t exactly a virgin and since I was already fucking for free, what was the problem to let someone film it and make some extra dough from it, right?” She shook her head. “I didn’t realize the shootings took hours and hours, and a lot of people shouting at me because my tits weren’t in the right angle or whatever. I didn’t realize they were literally pumping us full of pills to keep us awake during the long working hours. I didn’t realize part of the job would be going to parties with some bored rich guys who would literally pay to grope us and fuck us. I was really, really stupid.” She held the DVD box up. “See this blonde?”

She pointed at the naughty nurse to the left, a woman with sensual full lips and blonde curls cascading down her shoulders. Castiel nodded.

“Her name was Lilith,” Meg told him. “Artistic name, of course. She wasn’t as bothered as me about the darkest side of the job. She OD’d on heroin two years after we filmed this thing.”

“Meg…”

“It freaked me out enough to want out,” Meg continued. “I’d saved up enough, I’d put myself through school. I opened my shop and boy, some days it was hard to not pick up the phone when Crowley called telling me I was still ‘_part of the family_’ and that he had a job lined up right for me.”

“Is he still…?”

“Oh, no.” Meg shook her head. “Abaddon threw a brick through his window and keyed a warning to leave me alone on his car.”

Castiel decided that, whatever Dean said about her, Abaddon was okay in his book.

“But I pressed on and got my life back,” she stated. “At least I thought I was well enough to start dating and having sex again. Easier said than done, it turns out. Because, you see, most guys want to fuck on the third date or so and I had to give them an explanation as to why sex was so complicated for me sometimes I couldn’t get aroused or why sometimes I would literally break down during intercourse.”

“I’m sorry,” Castiel said.

Meg laughed and he figured saying those words was like putting a band aid on a bullet wound. But he couldn’t help saying them anyway.

“Well, eventually, I did get to fuck with relative normality again, so don’t be,” she said. “But it was still hard to find people who were… understanding, you know? Whenever I told them about me being in porn movies, they either freaked out and started treating me like I was used goods… or they were way into it. Like, creepily so. They couldn’t understand that the naughty nurse was a character I played, not actually me. I didn’t like everything I did on screen, I just…”

Her voice broke down again. Castiel wanted to hug her, but before he could stand up to do so, Meg took another deep breath and kept going:

“And then there was you.”

“What did I do?” Castiel asked, hoping that it hadn’t been anything bad.

“That’s the point. You did _nothing_,” Meg said. “You didn’t want to sleep with me right away, hell, you didn’t even want to date me right away. You wanted to get to know me before you could decide and… I guess one of the reasons I didn’t tell you about all of this before was because I was scared.”

“Scared of what?” Castiel asked, frowning. “Of me?”

“Yes. Because I like you way more than I should,” Meg confessed. “I liked you from the very first night we met, I… I don’t think I’ve ever liked anyone quite this much, even before…” She swallowed and kept talking. “And a part of me wants you to love me, warts and all. The other part of me… well, let’s just say I am aware my warts are pretty ugly.”

This time, Castiel didn’t hesitate to put his hand on her cheek. It was kind of an uncomfortable position, with him leaning over the wall that her knees form, trying to keep her balance and not fall over her. But he needed her to be looking at him in the eye when he spoke:

“I don’t see any warts. I just see you.”

Meg’s anguished expression melted away into one of tenderness. She lowered her knees so Castiel could come closer to her and plant another kiss over her lips. As soft as he could, careful, giving her every opportunity to break away and back down.

She didn’t.

She slept on her bed again that night, but this time he joined her. He put his hands on her waist and pulled her closer to him and if he drifted away in the middle of the night, Meg would snuggle closer. She was obviously tired and still a little shaken, but it was as if she wanted to make sure he wasn’t going to leave her.

When he woke up the following day, she was in deep slumber, with her face very close to him on the pillow. Castiel stayed very still, not even dare to alter the rhythm of his breathing, fearing it would wake her up. Finally, slowly, he raised his hand and brushed aside a lock of her hair that had fallen over her face. In a moment more, he would press his lips against her forehead and wake her up. In a moment more, he would ask her what she wanted for breakfast and he would listen to her weird dreams. He would listen to whatever she wanted to tell him, her stories both sad and happy, her laughter and her crying.

But this moment, right now, it was just as perfect as he’d imagined it would be.

And he really didn’t need much more to _know_.


End file.
